In the Introduction, we define a coup d’état as the unconstitutional replacement of the incumbent executive by military officers or civilians supported by the armed forces, an act that is often accompanied by the suspension of civil guarantees and liberties as well as the nullification of legislative power. We then provide an overview of the economic underpinnings of twentieth-century Latin America and describe the main characteristics of the Cold War in the subcontinent (from the role of the US to the impact of Cuba’s integration into the socialist bloc, from the changing role of the military as an institution to the Doctrine of National Security). We examine the role of the Catholic Church, one of the key actors during this period, in political stability. We close by offering two possible ways to read this book, taking advantage of the comparative framework that its structure offers. Our collective goal in this volume is to explain the end of an era – the Cold War – that conditioned the subcontinent’s transition to democratic regimes, regardless of whether subsequent governments have slanted neoliberal or neo-populist.

As the three primary cases do not show every configuration of independent variables that should lead to failed concealing, this chapter begins with two more circumscribed explorations of failed concealing in Tanzania and Honduras. It then explores the other strategies and examines their long-term effects. Although concealing is intrinsically risky since a ruler cannot know their own state’s legibility and presence of a strong enough asymmetrically interdependent relationship until these are tested in action, these other strategies may carry even bigger risks. As such, we should expect to see rulers, especially those with reasonable patronage-based capacity but little autonomy from outsiders’ interests and interference in their domestic affairs to try to conceal unsavoury domestic practices. It is therefore important to remain mindful of the effects successful concealing can have on global norms of human rights and good governance.

Founded by the Constitution of the year III, and with the executive power divided between five Directors, and the legislative power divided into two houses, the Directory sought political middle ground. It defied at the same time the “Jacobins” of Babeuf’s conspiracy and the constitutional circles, and the royalists of the Philanthropic Institute, who were ready to seize power by means of elections or force. In the name of this double danger, real or supposed, the Directors set up coups d’état to nullify election results by associating themselves with generals haloed by their expeditions and their victories abroad (in Egypt or the “sister-republics”). The Directory tried to muzzle the press, supervise the theater, multiply the official celebrations, and reform primary and secondary education. It tried in vain to spread a national religion (theophilanthropy) to control public opinion, to favor a republican elite, to tie scholars to the regime. In charge of a society marked by strong contrasts between the new rich who benefited from the development of the arts, and those left behind (the downgraded, unemployed, deserters, emigrants), it was confronted with corruption and brigandage.

After independence, Burundi went through a process of rapid political disintegration. Uprona factionalised into political and ethnic blocs, while facing off against Rwanda as an ideological and geopolitical enemy. This chapter explores the rapid changes between 1962 and 1967, seeing the attempts to rule in the control of official truth. It examines the extreme hostility of the state towards the borderland population, and the forms of political language used in national address. It presents a moment of violence in 1964 when dissidents ran a campaign of arson from across the border, and the performances of loyalty enacted by others to display their obedience to official truth. Noting the national crisis over Prime Minister Ngendandumwe’s assassination in 1965, and the subsequent elections, attempted coups d’état and the first large-scale ethnic violence, it finally presents local responses to a military coup in 1966 that abolished the monarchy. Some resisted the coup by treating it as just another ‘rumour’, but most greeted the news with cautious silence. Official truth changed to exclude royal authority, but maintained old hostilities to Rwanda, rumour and ethnic politics.